"The next permanent director will want to build on [an] increasingly stable platform, with bribery and corruption, fraud, money laundering and overseas tax evasion the likely first targets," Pickworth said in his op-ed. "The SFO will want to find ways to achieve a quicker throughput of some of its cases. It simply has too many investigations on its books that have been running for too long with no end in sight".

Pickworth also said to "expect to see continued improvements in the SFO's relationship with the US Department of Justice, more investigations being resolved by the use of DPAs." But, he also said that "the challenges of Brexit lie ahead" and "the SFO will sorely miss Eurojust and the European arrest warrant, but it is likely to continue co-operating closely with Europe and the US."